Timeless Torah

Twice the Torah gives voice to a series of prophecies regarding the sufferings that will befall the Jewish people if they fail to honor their mission. These terrifying passages are not to be interpreted as a “fire and brimstone” sermon: do this or else bad things will happen to you. Without a doubt, the Torah did not want the Israelites to pursue their vocation out of fear. Rather, these warnings are a form of passionate pleading, representing a future that G-d does not want to happen. But such is the risk of a small people challenging the Divine script.
There are many differences between the two tochachot (rebukes). The first is the reported speech of G-d, and ends on a note of consolation. The second is the direct speech of Moses, and frankly, it concludes rather bleakly. There is however a further difference; and here one can only be awestruck at the reach of Moses’ prophetic vision.
G-d’s remonstration speaks of a fundamental breach between Israel and Heaven. The language is harsh: “If you reject my decrees and abhor my laws,” and, “If you continue to be hostile to me,” signifying an active rebellion against G-d. In our section, the language is entirely different. It does not speak of a willful, petulant nation deliberately spurning G-d. Indeed it speaks of something that hardly sounds like a sin. Israel would suffer, “Because you did not serve G-d...with joy and gladness in the midst of the abundance of all (good things).”
Moses’ paradoxical message is, “For forty difficult years you wandered in the wilderness, and only by a series of miracles did you have anything to eat or drink. But now upon reaching the Promised Land, don’t think your challenges are over. On the contrary, it is here that the real challenge will begin. ‘When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses, when your herds and flocks grow and your silver and gold increase, when all you have is multiplied - it is then you must beware lest your heart becomes proud and you forget G-d who brought you out of Egypt and the land of slavery.’”
With a vision extending beyond the immediate blessings at hand, Moses gives voice to the most counter-intuitive message imaginable. The greatest challenge is not slavery but freedom; not poverty but affluence; not danger but security; not homelessness but home. Specifically, when we have most to thank G-d for, we are in the greatest danger of not thanking, or even thinking of, Him at all.
And so it was. Throughout the almost unbearable centuries of expulsions, forced conversions, and autos-da-fe, through the ghettoes and pogroms, Jews prayed to G-d, studied His word, kept His commands, and held fast to their identity as Jews with an awesome tenacity. It was only when equality beckoned and society opened its doors, that they abandoned their faith.
The astonishing fact is that Moses knew it, and now 3,300 years later we know it too. Perhaps in this context we can understand the first priestly blessing, “May G-d bless you and protect you.” It is when we are most blessed that we are most in need of protection of not forgetting from where the blessings come.
So Moses pleads with all the eloquence at his disposal. Our faith, he says, is not a religion of tragedy, a story written in tears. It is a celebration of life. Time and again he emphasizes, “These are the commands you shall do and live by them.”
This is not marginal to Judaism, but its essence. G-d created a universe and saw, “That it is good.” Other philosophies however felt that G-d can be found only through asceticism, and a denial of pleasure. At the opposite extreme, Epicurus (from whom Rabbinic Hebrew derived its word for “heretic”, apikoros) argued that since the only reality is material, one should devote oneself to the pursuit of pleasure.
The Jewish view by contrast seeks G-d in the physical, as well as spiritual, blessings. The G-d of revelation is also the G-d of creation, meaning that to be close to G-d is to go with, not against, the grain of nature. That is not to say that Judaism is hedonism: quite the contrary. Asceticism is the denial of pleasure; hedonism is the worship of it. Judaism rejects both and instead invites us to sanctify pleasure: food, by the laws of kashrut; drink through Kiddush at sacred times; intimacy through the disciplines of marriage and mikvah. To be a Jew is to celebrate life, to see G-d in life, and to make a blessing over life.
It is precisely this capacity to sanctify pleasure that has made Judaism immune to the one tendency that has destroyed other civilizations, namely affluence as a prelude to decadence. In Judaism pleasure is never mere pleasure, because, firstly it is dedicated to G-d; second, it is shared with others; third because it is seen as G-d’s blessing, not something we made ourselves.
There is a rabbinic aphorism that, “G-d creates the remedy before the disease.” Prior to the tochachah, Moses outlines the law of first-fruits, to be brought in a celebratory manner, to the Temple. In a moving ritual, each Israelite made a personal declaration, “My father was a wandering Aramean,” - the passage that forms the center piece of the Pesach Haggada. The Torah concludes that section on first-fruits with the command to rejoice not alone, but with “The Levites and the strangers among you...for all the good things the Lord has given to you.”
Judaism is a religion of remembering where we came from, and of knowing that what was placed in our trust by G-d is to be used for the good of all, not just ourselves. Moses’ Tochacho of Plenty is today’s challenge - to turn material satisfactions into spiritual affirmations.